The BDS'ers Don't Know About Dr. Darawshe

The admission of Palestinian Arab patients to Israel’s finest hospitals where they are given free treatment is only half the story that gets no press.

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Jerry Sobel, 27/12/13 12:41

Rambam doctors with the patient they saved

Piotr Fliter

Jerry Sobel

The writer has a B.A. in 20th century European History and a Masters in International Relations from The City College of New York. He is a staunch Zionist and has been writing articles on Israel and Jewish concerns for 40 years, blogs at Israeli Advocate.

According to Dr. Darawshe, “The integration of Arabs into the medical field has been impressive in this country.”

In January 2005, an interesting event took place at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba Israel. A 21 year old Palestinian Arab woman named Wafa Ibrahim al-Bliss was admitted for severe burns suffered during what she said was a cooking accident at her home in the Gaza strip. Following extensive treatment she was returning for additional therapy in June of that year, when the story turned macabre. She was arrested by Israeli authorities at the Erez crossing point. As a "token of her gratitude" she was caught wearing no less than 10 kgs of explosives in her underwear.

This is the quagmire Israel is faced with, but gets no credit for. Despite hundreds of suicide bombings over the past 30 years, and the immutable threat of others to come, 219,464 Palestinian Arab patients have received medical treatment in Israeli hospitals during 2012, 21,270 of them children.

One of these Arab “children” was a 15 year old Palestinian Arab boy admitted to Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot for severe burns suffered last March due to shrapnel injuries incurred when a rocket pad he was using to fire into Israel exploded.

Stretching irony to the limit, the brother-in law and sister of vehement Jew hater and Prime Minister of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyah were also within this number. The husband was admitted to Belinson Hospital in Petach Tikva Israel for treatment of a serious heart condition.

But the admission of Palestinian Arab patients to Israel’s finest hospitals where they are given free treatment is only half the story that gets no press.

This past May, Dr. Hanni Abadin, the Palestinian Arab Minister of Health, visited the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem and thanked the Administration since at any given time there are 60 medical personnel from his community being trained at the hospital.

Unfortunately, however, along with other acts of kindness and humanity far exceeding any other country made to fight incessant war, none of this has any sway or influence.

It certainly didn't affect the American Studies Association (ASA) when we voted to endorse a boycott of Israel. Sadly but unsurprisingly, several of the supporters were Jewish scholars. What’s the reasoning behind this?

In a statement issued by the ASA national council the boycott was warranted due to U.S. military support for the Jewish State and violation of international law and U.N. resolutions. The bigotry of this group seems to know no bounds as they further charge:

“Israeli institutions of higher education are a party to state policies that violate human rights” and conclude: The boycott “represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom.”

That’s quite an indictment, I guess nobody mentioned that to Dr. Aziz Darawshe, former head of emergency medicine at the Emek Medical Center in Afula Israel. He was recently appointed director of emergency medicine at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. The hospital is one of Israel’s finest and it is where 40% of the medical staff are comprised of Arabs.

According to Dr. Darawshe, “The integration of Arabs into the medical field has been impressive in this country.” He goes on to say: “Since the establishment of the State of Israel, this has been so in hospitals and health funds and in Education Ministry institutions.”

None of this is of any consequence to leftist “academics” in Europe, America, or in Israel itself. It interferes with their biased narrative that Israel is the bad guy surrounded by people of goodwill.

Caroline Glick wrote, referring to members of the aforementioned ASA: “they represent doctorate holders who chose to devote their careers to disciplines predicated not on scholarship, but on political activism cloaked in academic regalia.”....”Rejecting Israel’s right to exist has become part of the Left’s dogma. It is part of the catechism which holds a negative view of the Jewish state and is a condition for membership in their ideological camp.

There is an initiative called AMCHA, spearheaded by by two California educators; Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Leila Beckwith, Professor Emeritus, University California. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, educating about, and combating anti-Semitism at institutions of higher education in America.

They both find a frightening parallel to todays anti-Israel/anti-Semitic BDS movement and that of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s when Jewish scholars were expelled and forbidden to publish or partake in German Universities. Both Benjamin and Beckwith make a compelling argument:

Academic boycotts of Israeli academic institutions and scholars, like virtually all anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns within the last several years, have been established in response to the Palestinian Arab political call to join the BDS movement against Israel. That call was issued in 2005 by a coalition of Palestinian Arab organizations that include the terrorist organizations Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Its purpose is to facilitate the elimination of the Jewish state.

In 2011 President Obama appointed Hannah Rosenthal as: Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. As a former member of the far left organization, “Americans for Peace” and an adviser to the equally fringe group, “J Street,” many people, including this writer rolled their eyes at her appointment. However, we were happily surprised. On April 2nd of that year she gave a speech at: “Indiana University Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism.”

Rosenthal aptly pointed out that traditional anti-Semitism: Jews killings children to steal their organs; defacing property; desecration of cemeteries; blood libels; and even complicity in 911 are still alive and doing well. As many of us know, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is still a number one seller in most countries throughout the Islamic world. But she held no punches recognizing a form of anti-Semitism that’s relatively new to North American campuses. She stated:

“If all Jews are held responsible for the decisions of the sovereign State of Israel, when governments call upon and intimidate their Jewish communities to condemn Israeli actions, when academics from Israel are boycotted, this is not objecting to a policy, this is anti-Semitism.”

If not outright anti-Semitism, what else could it be? As if more proof were needed, a company called Maplecroft is the world’s leading global research and strategic forecasting company. They do risk analysis for human rights violations on a yearly basis. For 2013, they listed the following 10 countries chronologically as the most egregious violators of human rights:

Sudan

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Somalia

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Myanmar

Iraq

Syria

Yemen

South Sudan

Where is the unctuous outcry from the boycotters toward these countries whose main religion and mindset is inescapable?

As we approach March and the absurdly blasphemous “Apartheid Week” libel aimed at Israel, will the venom of leftist professors and their student dupes be aimed at Saudi Arabia who refuse to fly Jews on their airlines?

Will Egypt continue to get a free pass for its unrelenting persecution of Coptic Christians which are now leaving the country in droves?

What about their cause cé·lè·bre the Palestinians, can we now expect campus demonstrations against the PLO for their truly apartheid admonition that a Palestinian state must be Judenrein (free of Jews)?

The BDS movement, the darling of the Left, whether conducted by academia, international companies, or nations themselves is no different than the discriminatory, double standard anti-Semitic policies Jews have suffered for millennia. It should be exposed and fought against for exactly what it is.